Keystone’s big mystery: What will John Kerry do?

People close to Kerry say he has avoided getting directly involved with the department’s Keystone review, withholding judgment until lower-level regulators complete their analysis. He appears to have learned from the missteps of his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who made waves in 2010 for suggesting during off-the-cuff remarks in San Francisco that the State Department was “inclined” to approve the pipeline.

But whether he likes it or not, Kerry will soon be thrust into the middle of the years-long debate on the pipeline, which would provide the missing link for carrying oil-sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.

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The former Massachusetts senator will have to render a verdict on the project after the department decides whether the pipeline would be in the national interest, a process that could take months. Kerry is under no legal deadline to make a decision.

While it would have been easy for Kerry to oppose Keystone as a senator, his role as secretary of state makes the decision much more complicated. Kerry has to balance his climate activists roots with a host of new considerations, including the effect of a rejection on the relationship between the United States and Canada. And he has other major issues on his plate, including Mideast peace negotiations.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made securing approval of the pipeline a top priority, even making the case directly to Obama. He’s been ratcheting up the pro-Keystone rhetoric in recent months.

“My view is that you don’t take no for an answer,” Harper said in September. “We haven’t had that. If we were to get that, that won’t be final. This won’t be final until it’s approved and we will keep pushing forward.”

Harper and other Canadian officials have also made frequent trips to the United States to lobby for the project, as well as placing prominent ads in D.C. Metro stations and publications like The Washington Post and POLITICO. In a letter to Obama in August, the prime minister even offered to take action to address the environmental concerns surrounding oil sands production in exchange for a Keystone approval.

But greens say they won’t support any deal.

“Groups have made it very clear that the line in the sand is Keystone,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program. “Period. With no horse trading.”

Though Kerry hasn’t given any direct clues about where he’ll land on Keystone, the Democrat hasn’t shied away from talking about climate change. Many of his major speeches include lines about the importance of tackling the issue.

During remarks at an early October APEC conference in Indonesia, for example, Kerry said world leaders have a “moral responsibility” to deal with climate change.

“I know that when people talk about climate change, eyes still glaze over,” Kerry said. “And against all evidence, there are still some people who wonder if it’s real — and many wonder what they can actually do about it. Well, the fact is that the absence of a concerted global commitment to address this is inviting catastrophe.”

“There’s no question that Kerry takes under very serious consideration the fairly unified climate movement to stop Keystone,” Slocum said. “There’s no question that he’s got an acute sensitivity to that and is figuring out how to deal with this issue. What’s unclear is how this is going to shake out.”